Tale trots out at pleasant pace

movies - review

October 21, 2005|By Roger Moore, Sentinel Movie Critic

Dreamer is a girl-and-her-horse tale that gets by on Seabiscuit crumbs. It's a well-acted if unsurprising family drama that wears its "uplifting" label with pride. Of course this is kid-friendly. It's for kids.

Dakota Fanning, she of the ancient, wise and accusatory eyes, enters her tween years as Cale Crane, the only child of a horse trainer played by Kurt Russell and his wife (Elisabeth Shue).

Something's not quite right with the Cranes. Dad doesn't talk much with his own pop (Kris Kristofferson). He can't connect with his little girl.

And wouldn't you know it, the one day he takes Cale to work with him: A) he is chewed out by his boss, played by David Morse, B) the horse he's ordered to race breaks her leg, and C) in a snit with the boss, he loses his job and gains custody of the injured animal.

No worries. They'll nurse Sonador back to health, breed her and make money off her champion-sired foals. That's Cale's idea.

Things fall apart before Dad has to explain the horsey birds-and-bees to his little girl. But again, no worries. Sonador's name means "dreamer." Every time you turn around, some character or other is saying, "Remember dreams, Ben?"

Everybody has dreams, especially Cale. She dreams of getting her bargain-priced thoroughbred into the Breeder's Cup.

The story is strictly routine, and the "inspired by a true story" bit that the studio insisted on attaching to the title merely says "We made this up, more or less."

But the acting is superb. The father-son stuff between Kristofferson and Russell has a well-worn snap to it. All of the actors look like the relatives they're supposed to be. Kristofferson looks as if he could be Russell's dad, and Fanning, if she's lucky, will grow up as lovely as Shue.

Fanning is tentative but believable in her first post-third-grade role. She has learned to play with her hair in every shot like a movie star. Thankfully, we aren't treated to her War of the Worlds screams in this one.

Actor-turned-writer-director John Gatins (Coach Carter) squanders screen time with a few too many aerial shots of beautiful Kentucky horse country. The script has blind alleys, such as the feuding horse-loving Arab princes -- Oded Fehr plays one, with barely a line in the film. They drive the action but are discarded to make way for more scenes on the practice track.

Dreamer is too obvious, too trite and too sentimental to ever be more than Seabiscuit for tweens. But that's all it ever dreamed of being.